Tuesday, 28 September 2010

When I initially made this, I burnt it and so was too embarrassed to post a photo. So I made it again last night (I am very competitive with myself) and it turned out so nice that I can post a photo now.

The burning, I'd like to point out, was not my fault. It was the stupid flaming recipe, from the New Penguin Cookery Book. Stupid dumbass piece of shit. I ought to have smelt a rat, with its hilarious 220C for 40 minutes recommendation, but what can I say? I'm a trusting sort.

One of the comments below asks what one is supposed to eat with toad-in-the-hole. The answer is anything you like, but traditionally onion gravy and cabbage. I don't know how to make onion gravy but I hear it's not difficult.

In general, this is a really very easy and an excellent thing to cook for a relaxed Saturday lunch or something. You an make the onion gravy and batter well in advance and then half an hour before you want to eat you whack the sausages in the pan, pour over the batter and it's done.

Don't worry - or rather, you ought not worry - that this is perhaps not a very sophisticated thing to cook; everyone will be beside themselves to get toad-in-the-hole for lunch and cooking lunch at home for friends (if you have some) is not about sophistication, it's about you not screeching around the house, bright red, going "shit shit shit the roulade is FUCKED" and then sitting down, taking two mouthfuls of dry beef and wailing "This is horrible - no-one eat it!!!!!!"

Not that I speak from experience or anything.

Toad in the hole

Batter makes enough for 4-6
Allow 2 sausages each for girls and 3 each for boys. I'm not being sexist and trying to make out that girls have tiny tummies and eat nothing because they're all on diets to get thin, thin, thin so they can marry a rich man because that's all they're good for - I'm just saying in general, girls eat two and boys eat three.

Of course, one girl will eat only one and another girl will have three. One boy will have only two and one girl has one and the other girl will have four. It's just a rule of thumb, okay? so that you don't go mental and buy 50 sausages for 6 people.

1 Pre-heat the oven to 220C. Whisk together the batter ingredients. You're less likey to get lumps if you half-mix the eggs and dry ingredients together before adding the milk. Rest the batter if you feel like it.

2 Put the fat in an roasting pan and stick it in the hot oven for 3-4 minutes until it's melted, then add the sausages.

3 Put the sausages back in the oven in the fat for 8-10 minutes. Now this is really important, so stop half-checking Facebook and listen to me: the fat must be SMOKING hot before you pour the batter in. When you open the oven and blue-ish smoke billows out, that's when it's time to pour the batter in.

I was always a bit scared of getting the fat this hot in the oven because I thought it would catch on fire or something. But turns out it doesn't.

4 Take the pan out of the oven when the fat is smoking and pour the batter around the sausages. Turn the oven down to 180C

5 Put the pan back in for 30 minutes, but check on it after 20mins just to make damn sure it's not alight. It'll be ready when it's all puffed up and golden brown.

When I was at school, there was such a thing as "tea", which happened at 4.10pm every day. This wasn't my grammar school, mind. At my grammar school you got booted out at 3.30pm and bought a Crunchie bar on the way home if you were lucky. But at the ludicrously expensive private school I insisted on going to from 16 to 18, (because there were BOYS), there was "tea".

Tea consisted of three things: toast, cake and cups of tea, served in thimble-sized catering cups with weeny handles so that if you spilt the whole lot all over the floor (this happened quite often) it didn't matter. The toast was made from white bread and eaten with peanut butter and jam. And the cake... well I don't remember anything about any of the other cakes they made except the banana bread.

O God! That banana bread. I was always starving at school. Starving. And it wasn't because I was a teenager, it was because there was hardly any time to eat food, only time for reading books and writing things down and worrying about your spots leaking through the concealer-and-powder you applied at first break.

By teatime I had probably consumed about 700 calories but probably expended 1,000+ all over my books and in the direction of whichever poor sucker I'd got a crush on that week. I had just about enough beans to drag myself on my belly, reaching hand over hand, whimpering along the pavement - being stepped over by better-looking and better-dressed boys and girls with no spots - to College Hall, a ramshackle and wonky building that looks like it was built by witches, down a small cobbled passageway off the main drag to Westminster Abbey.

Paydirt. I never ate fewer than three slices. And I simply didn't understand why no-one else was as wowed by it as I was. But that's being a teenager for you, I suppose.

This is a recipe I found on the Waitrose website, which is generally reliable. It also has the saving grace of having no dicking about with rubbing in or creaming together the butter and sugar - my most hated thing.

I have also added, for fun, some bashed up chunks of chocolate and walnuts, but if you prefer your banana bread as God intended, leave them - and/or the walnuts out too. I doubt it'll make any difference to anything.

But do NOT, please, be tempted to add cocoa powder for a hint of chocolatiness because it will dry the whole thing out and make it gross. No reason why you should, but I did this once because I'm an idiot and it was a disaster and someone might as well benefit from my mistake because my husband certainly didn't.

Banana, chocolate and walnut loaf

Makes 1 1kg loaf

350g self-raising flour
3 large or 4 small overripe bananas (yes, they must be overripe - any point up until actually mouldy is fine).
120g sugar
50g melted butter
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
125ml milk
some veg oil for greasing your loaf tin
handful of walnuts, chopped - if using
6 squares cooking chocolate, chopped - if using

1 Sieve the sugar, flour and salt into a bowl.

2 Add the egg, milk and melted butter and stir. At this point the mixture will look way too dry - don't panic and add more milk, thinking "Oh God Esther's such a spazmo". When you add the bananas it will all make sense.

3 Mash and add the bananas. Now is the moment to also nuts, chocolate, a dash of cinnamon, vanilla essence, or anything else you fancy.

4 Give it all a good stir and turn out into your greased tin. Bake at 180C for 1 hour.

If you try to slice it when it's still warm it will all fall apart, best to wait until it's cooled down and then it will slice up really well.

Friday, 24 September 2010

This is, as I'm sure you know, being the well-travelled sophisticates that you are, is a Greek spinach, feta and filo pastry pie.

It's extremely easy, very delicious and looks like it was way harder to make than it actually is. Lovely on its own if you've got a tedious veggie round, or as a side with grilled chicken. Not very autumnal, but I refuse to be constrained by such bourgeoise ideas.

1 Fry off the shallots and then add the spinach. Cover and leave to wilt, which will take about 5 mins.

2 Let the spinach cool a bit OR add the feta straight from the fridge. You may need to bash it all up a bit with the edge of some kind of cooking implement until it's all vaguely combined.

3 Lightly toast the pine nuts if you can be arsed and add them, the beaten eggs, salt, pepper and a couple of scrapes of nutmeg, but don't go crazy on the nutmeg because it's basically horrible if you can really taste it. And poisonous if you eat too much. There you go: a fact.

4 Brush the base of your pan with butter and lay down 6 or 7 sheets of filo. It's important to brush between each layer with melted butter, otherwise the layers sort of separate from each other while they're cooking, which is annoying.

5 Spoon in your, by now very horrible-looking, spinach and cheese mixture and then lay more sheets of filo on top of that. I say go mad with the filo here - I only used 4 layers which wasn't enough. I'd say even up to 10 sheets. Don't forget to brush between each sheet with butter and brush the top as well.

5 Cook at 180C for 40 minutes. Finish off with 5 minutes at 200C if the top isn't looking very brown.

Tuesday, 21 September 2010

I've always been really shit at making friends. My problem is that I never ring anyone because I can never think of anything to say and I worry that they're busy and will be wondering why I rang. I once told a spiritual healer (long story) that I never rang anyone and even she, all sort of accepting and calm, made a face and screeched "What - EVER?"

And I thought about it and said: "No." I don't ring my mum, I don't ring my sisters unless I need to talk about what's going on at Christmas this year, or I need to borrow money, I never rang my husband when we were "dating" and I don't ring any of my friends.

So that means I'm friends with people who are extremely patient and don't mind that I never ring them, and who ring me every now and again to suggest we go to the movies.

It also means that I hardly ever make any new friends because, as you can imagine, I'm not an especially attractive new friend prospect. "My name's Esther and I'm quite judgmental, will never let you finish a sentence, fall asleep at 10.30pm, will try to solve all your problems and I'll never ring you. Let's be friends." My one saving grace is that I remember birthdays and I always answer the phone sounding pleased to hear from people.

But I did last year make a new friend and her name is Julia. She likes dogs and does an incredibly convincing German accent. I think she is Dutch. Or from Holland (is that the same thing? Is Holland the place that only exists in England?) She's a great cook, which is quite rare in such a go-getting career girl, and has recently peroxided her hair bright white, which looks really cool. She finds almost anything funny, which is great because I need people to laugh at my jokes otherwise I can't sleep.

She quite often in the mornings, just as I'm slumped at my laptop weeping over the parlous state of my career, emails me to ask me what I'm cooking today, which more often than not makes me cook something.

She also does a thing that I approve of, which is to dispense with email niceties. Therefore an email might just say (no subject):

"What are you cooking today?"

and that's it.

I'll say:

"I'm cooking a Spanakopita"

and she'll say:

"YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

and that's it! It really cheers me up.

Anyway, last night I cooked a Nigel Slater prune pudding, which went really well. I didn't cook it specifically with Julia in mind, but now I think about it, subconsciously I probably wanted an answer for her this morning when she asked me what I'm going to/have been cooking.

1 Set the oven to 160C and roughly chop the prunes and pour over your alcohol. Set to one side.

2 Butter and lightly flour your pudding basins. YES YOU MUST DO THIS. The flouring bit is quite hard, don't rub the flour in, just sort of sprinkle it round the sides, shake it round a bit and then pour the remainder out into the next bowl.

3 Cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. God this is a boring thing to do. I wish I had an electric whisk

4 Add the eggs one small gloop at a time. They will attempt to curdle so you can add a bit of your 120g of flour at the same time as the egg to stop it doing this. Although I've never seen what the problem is with a bit of curdling.

5 Fold in the flour.

6 Add the prunes-and-booze and mix. Divide between your four small or one large basin (the mixture ought to come 2/3 of the way up the side of the dish) and bake for 40-45 minutes. If you are doing just one big one, it might take slightly longer. It will be ready when a skewer stuck into the middle comes out clean.

You absolutely need some kind of custard, cream or caramel sauce with this. It is not an especially dry pudding, but you need one just the same.

You can also (which I will be doing next time) substitute apples for the prunes, just because I like apples.

Monday, 20 September 2010

Experienced cooks will laugh at me when I reveal that I have only recently discovered the reason for and method of including alcohol in certain things.

But amateur cooks will appreciate it so everyone else can just take a long cool drink of shut the hell up.

I've always chucked a glass of red wine here or there into things that seem like they might benefit from it (stews, bologneses etc) but I now see I've been putting it in way too late.

The thing to do, I now see, is to add the alcohol at a much earlier stage and let it reduce until the alcohol has burned off and you're left with a kind of sticky and rich saucy thing. I've been doing this with a lot of things recently and it really works and helps a lot.

So, for example, if you're making a bolognese-type-thing, add a large glass of red wine to your mince after it has done its browning and let it bubble for a few minutes - (try not to wander off at this stage - the doorbell will only be a young offender selling J-Cloths anyway and you don't need to be distracted by his handsome young rascally ways) - until it fizzles down to a faintly glossy halo around your beef. Then continue as normal, add your sauteed onions and whatever other veg you're using. You'll find the wine adds a real richness and darkness to it that you won't get from throwing it in after you've added chopped tomatoes, as I've been doing, like a complete penis.

In stews, you can do the same thing, although I tend to add the booze, (you can use beer), to the sauteed vegetables, rather than to the meat. Don't know why, it's just a gut feeling. And the Lord knows I didn't get here without listening to my gut. *burp*

Thursday, 16 September 2010

Continuing on a Paul Hollywood theme, this is his classic cornish pasty recipe. This means that the pastry is neither flaky nor lardy - it's robust and faintly chewy - as it would have to be to be transported down t'pit by the miners for whom these were invented.

The flavour of this recipe is just excellent and if you've never made a cornish pasty before and fancy having a go, this is a good recipe that works well and will produce something that tastes exactly like some cornish pasties that you have eaten in your life.

What it is not is an unctuous, greasy, sinful pasty you might purchase at Greggs or similar - just so we're clear. You'd probably be able to achieve that with a very high lard-content pastry, but I don't have exact measurements for that. Yet.

1 Sieve the flour and salt into a bowl. Cut the veg shortening and butter up into small chunks and add that. I squeezed it all round a bit in the flour to mix it in but that isn't neccessary.

2 Add all the water and mix round until it comes together roughly. Then go in with your hands and bring together. Knead on a clean surface for 5-6 minutes. If you're feeling a bit neurotic, I recommend putting a timer on because 5 minutes is longer than you think it is.

3 After five mins the pastry ought to be a uniform colour, pastry-like and semi-silky. Stick this in the fridge for a minimum of 30 mins

4 Chop up all your veg very small. I'm talking 0.5cm cubes here. Chop the steak up bloody small, too. Mix it all together in a bowl and season. Add one more pinch of salt than you think you need and at least two more twists of pepper. A cornish pasty is traditionally quite a peppery thing.

5 The assembly part is quite tricky and is basically down to your individual dexterity. I rolled my pastry out then used an upside-down bowl to cut out a large-ish circular bit of pastry. I filled the middle with pasty mixture, brushed around the circumference of the pastry with egg wash and then sealed it. But I'm buggered if I understand how "crimping" the edges works. You may have more luck than me. I possibly, like the fated Jas on the GBBO, over-filled my pasties.

6 Lay out your pasties on a well-greased baking sheet, because these leak steak juice something terrible and will superglue themselves to an un-greased surface. Brush all over with egg wash and cook for between 45-55 minutes at 170C or 150C for fan-assisted ovens. I did mine for 150C at 45mins and then as they weren't going brown enough, wacked up the temperature to 180C for another ten minutes.

Wednesday, 15 September 2010

As a general rule, I'm the first person to say something is shit. The thing I like doing most is laughing at the creative failures of others, while never being brave enough to do anything really creative myself, in case people laugh at me.

So when I read a couple of mean reviews of The Great British Bake-Off, I watched the first episode with popcorn and a party hat, thinking "Oh wow, this is going to be really bad." But it wasn't - it was brilliant. And anyone who says it's not just isn't interested in baking. That's all. That's the only thing wrong with it - if you're not interested in baking, it's dull. If you are, it's like porn.

I sort of love and hate Paul Hollywood - one of the Great British Bake-Off's "experts" although I shouldn't have put that in quotation marks because he really is an expert. He looks and sounds like an old editor of mine, whom I liked and disliked in equal measure. Anyway, he's really bossy and says things like "you haven't used enough salt" or "this has got a soggy bottom".

His book, 100 Great Breads - or something like that, is out of print and is changing hands for upwards of £90 on Amazon. But, God bless the internet, a lot of his recipes are available online.

Like this one, for soda bread. Soda bread is the potato painting of bread making. It requires no skill or dicking about with yeast whatsoever - all you need is opposable thumbs, a hot oven and an okay recipe.

And this is a good recipe, although I should point out that Paul Hollywood is not someone who is afraid of salt. Neither am I, so I think this bread is nice, but anyone who isn't that crazy about it, might think about reducing the salt content here from 1tsp to 0.5 or 0.75 tsp.

Paul Hollywood's soda bread - makes one loaf.

250g strong wholemeal bread flour
10g baking powder
1tsp salt
35g butter at room temperature - (you really do need to have it at room temperature, I know it's a pain but really it will only take about 20 mins out of the fridge to achieve this. Take it out and then read Grazia for a bit and before you know it, the butter will be ready)
75ml buttermilk (yes, you can get it in Waitrose - please see the comments section for instructions on how to make your own buttermilk from Hannah of Han Picked )
75ml milk
1 medium egg, beaten

1 Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together and work in the butter, as if you're making pastry. If you've never made pastry, this means you sort of crumble it and squeeze it through the flour, rubbing it together in your fingers until it goes crumby and disappears.

2 Add the other ingredients and mix well to form a dough, which ought to be quite heavy but not sticky or wet. Knead briefly, once or twice, just to get it all together and so that there are no obvious huge cracks in it.

3 Shape into a flattish round on some baking parchment on a baking sheet, score a cross in the top with a knife and leave to rest for 20 minutes. Set your oven to 200C now so that when you come to put the bread in the oven, it's really properly hot, which will mean your bread will bake evenly.

My first date with my husband was at Fino in Soho. I drank too much because I was over-excited and because this was the first date I'd been on with someone who had a job and was paying for everything. The only thing that really stands out is when I keeled over gently sideways in the booth and had a short nap while my date went to the loo.

Actually that's not the only thing I remember. I remember the plate of padron peppers we had, fried until they looked like little crumpled green bags, and covered in salt.

"Sometimes you get a really hot one," said my date. Whether I did or I didn't, I don't know. I was so drunk I could have been eating my own dress and not noticed.

Anyway, you don't often see these in the shops. I bought a couple of handfuls from my local holy food shop, Earth, on Kentish Town Road. They're pretty easy to cook, although they take longer than you think they do, about 20 minutes.

1 Heat some vegetable oil in a pan until it's very hot, tip the peppers in and then turn the heat down to medium.
2 Cook over a medium or low heat for about 20 minutes, turning now and again until they sort of surrender and crumple up.
3 Tip into a bowl and sprinkle generously with sea salt

Watch out because sometimes you really do get an awfully hot one. I got one yesterday and had to spit it out. It was pretty gross.

You are supposed to eat these with a very cold glass of fino sherry, but fino sherry tastes like pencil shavings and not everyone's crazy about it. But my experience is that if you drink enough fino sherry, it ceases to taste like anything at all.

Sunday, 12 September 2010

I'm deeply troubled by the number of people telling me that they're going to make the steak and kidney pudding without the kidney.

I would fight to the death to defend anyone's right not to eat offal and not be called fussy or pathetic but, really, it's a huge shame not to even have a few morsels of kidney in this. Fine! Don't use two kidneys - just one will do. But none at all? Then it's just a stew in fancy dress.

If you have small children and think they will make a fuss just chop the kidney up small and don't tell them what's in it. If they give you the sly eye and ask if there's kidney in it, just flat out lie. Say it must be a bit of mushroom.

And it really, really won't make your house smell like a nursing home. With the thyme and bay and garlic and then cooked for four hours it will just smell totally luxurious. Kidney doesn't really taste like kidney when it's been stewed long and hard like this - and you can trust me because I absolutely will not eat kidney in any other form, even devilled, I think it's really nasty. But it does add something very essential to the overall ambience of the pudding.

Saturday, 11 September 2010

Unfortunately, this looks like dog food, but in real life it was delicious and didn't look like dog food at all

This is one of those things that seems much harder to make than it actually is. Suet pastry must be one of the most forgiving things in cookery - you really only need to vaguely guess at the measurements and it comes out perfectly okay. And the filling, well - it's just a stew.

I classify this as an easy recipe because it worked for me first time and I wasn't even really paying attention and didn't have quite enough suet.

It's from Gary Rhodes' Rhodes Around Britain. I don't tend to cook much from this book, because all he ever wants you to do is reduce stocks from 5 litres to 1 tablespoonful and I've got better things to do. Like decide what colour to paint my room where I keep unopened bank statements study.

Like most pie or pudding recipes, this is a bit of a faff and requires time but it's not difficult. If you like steak and kidney pudding, this is well worth doing one weekend when you've not got that much on. You can make both the filling and the pastry a day in advance, if you like, and stuff like this freezes really well.

Steak and Kidney pudding, for 4

Gary Rhodes' recipe was for individual puddings but come the fuck on... we are not in a restaurant. This has been bastardised in a couple of other ways too, namely the tommy k and lea and perrins.

1 Chop up all your veg and sweat them over a low heat with the thyme and bay leaf for about 5-10 mins until soft. You can do this in vegetable oil or in butter. Not olive oil, please.Once they're soft, pour in the 150ml of Guinness, drink the remains of the can, burp richly, then boil this ale-and-veg mixture briskly until it's sort of saucy and sticky round the edges. Season with salt and pepper, add in the ketchup and worcestershire sauce. Take off the heat.

2 Fry off your beef and kidney in dripping or vegetable oil. If you're feeling really proper, pat your beef pieces dry on kitchen roll before you fry it and leave about a 2cm gap between the pieces of beef and kidney as they fry. Something awful happens if they're allowed to touch each other in the pan.

3 Add the meat to the veg-and-ale and then pour in your pint of stock. Simmer GENTLY for 1.5 hours. Let it cool.

4 To make the suet pastry, sieve the dry ingredients, then add the suet and mix round a bit. Add water splot by splot until you've got a rough-ish dough that leaves the sides of the bowl clean. It will be sort of studded with bits of suet - this is fine. Rest the dough for 20 minutes.

5 Roll out the pastry thin-ish, as it will swell on steaming. Line the pudding basin with it and then fill with your cooled steak and kidney mixture, draining the meat away from the stew liquid and having taken out the bay leaf. Trim off any remaining bits of pastry hanging over the edge of the basin and re-roll to form a lid. This bit is a bit fiddly, but don't worry if it all looks a bit rough. It's a steak and kidney pudding for god's sake, not a Faberge Egg.

6 Cover the basin with a tin foil hat and then put in a much larger pot on the hob. Fill the pot with boiling water half-way up the side of the pudding basin and then set it to a fast simmer for 2 hours. Keep an eye on the water level, as what it really likes to do is boil dry and then set the house on fire.

7 Push the left-over stew liquid through a sieve and then lenghten if you need to with some water to make a gravy you can pour over the pudding on eating. Don't be tempted to turn it out onto a plate - it's not a Christmas pudding and it will collapse under its own weight and you will cry and I don't need that on my conscience, okay?!?! Just spoon it out of the bowl.

Saturday, 4 September 2010

I've promised before not to go on about my mother in that tedious way that a lot of people do when they talk about food. I'm doubly not going to because my mother is Welsh. And to talk about her is to talk about where she comes from, and with it comes all that bogus teary nostalgia of the person who willingly fled their birth country years ago for a better life, barely to return, only to get all wistful about not returning.

There is a moment in Black Books when the Irish Bernard Black, now living in London and drunk, says to a 5 year old "Let me tell you about the old country, son. The songs! The songs! They'd... melt your face." That sums it up for me.

Having said all that, my mother did used to feed us so cheaply, despite my Dad earning a eyesmacking wack as some kind of City suit, on food so remeniscent of what you might get on a very dark farm in wartime Wales, that it's worth remarking on. The BSE crisis was paydirt for my mother, as no-one was buying beef on the bone, the price plummeted and we ate like kings until everyone else caught on that BSE isn't really a thing and then the price went up again. And so we went back to sausage and cabbage hotpot.

Which, it turns out, is absolutely delicious. I always dreaded it when I was a teenager, because I didn't have any inkling of how bad food could be in the real world when you have to buy it and cook it yourself. I went back home recently because my husband is away and I'm scared of the dark and get night terrors, like Kingsley Amis, and had this. I saw it and thought "Oh boring" but then tasted it and thought "Oh my God. How could I not have realised that this was delicious?" Then I became anxious and fearful at the thought of raising a child, which might become a similarly vile and ungrateful teenager as I am must have been.

Anyway honestly honestly, no really listen to me, this is a nice thing. It is. It's also a piece of piss. I can't explain how some cabbage leaves and skinned sausages can become something so rich and complex in the oven but it works. It's not a Welsh thing - Welsh food is exclusively leeks and stringy old mutton - just something cheap my mother found in a cookbook.

I gave it to my husband last night and I could tell he was dreading it from the sheer surprise in his voice when he took a mouthful and went "My word!". Like Y blydi Sais** he is.

Mamgu's* Sausage and Cabbage hotpot

1 savoy cabbage

however many sausages you want - probably 2 for girls and 3 for boys - the more expensive and rustic the better. my mother used to get them on special offer because of imminent sell-by dates
salt
pepper
butter

Pre-heat the oven to 150C

1 Blanch the cabbage leaves in boiling, salted water for 5 minutes. What you are going to do is layer the cabbage and the sausage together and you need about 2-3 cabbage leaves per layer.

2 Meanwhile skin the sausages. Yes, you must do this.

3 Butter a casserole dish and then start with a layer of cabbage leaves. Add a dot of butter, salt and pepper and 2 or 3 sausages.

4 Continue to layer sausage and cabbage, seasoning each layer with salt, pepper and butter. Go easy on the butter though because too much can be a bit vomity.

5 Finish with a layer of cabbage and then give a foil hat, then put the lid on and put in the oven for 2 hours at least. 2.5 hours ideally.

Eat with red camargue rice (or just dirt scooped up from the garden with your gnarled peasant fingers) and ketchup. Yeh-chid dah!***